‘Ragtime’ plan moves ahead

Kennedy Center production eyes Broadway

Plans for a Broadway transfer of the Kennedy Center production of “Ragtime” are moving ahead, with Gotham producers meeting to hammer out deals for a run next season.

The production, helmed by Marcia Milgrom Dodge, won strong reviews from D.C. press when it opened last month in a less splashy staging than the tuner’s big-budget Broadway bow in 1998.

KenCen incarnation, which ends its extended run Sunday, was budgeted at $4.4 million. Ron Bohmer, Christiane Noll, Manoel Felciano (“Sweeney Todd”) and Bobby Steggert (“110 in the Shade”) are among the cast.

No deals are yet set for the potential Main Stem transfer and no theater has been nailed down, although the Eugene O’Neill Theater, soon to be vacated by “33 Variations,” has been mentioned as an option. Timeline also remains up in the air.

Based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, musical has a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. Its original Rialto staging — which starred Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra McDonald — is linked in the minds of many legiters with the over-the-top excesses of its producer, Garth Drabinsky, last month convicted of fraud.

In recent years at the Kennedy Center, a 2006 staging of “Mame” starring Christine Baranski had prompted talk of a move to Gotham, but that transfer was deemed too costly and never materialized.